Monday, February 18, 2013

Over the next 30 years this emphasis on equalizing gender roles at home as well as at work produced a revolutionary transformation in Americans’ attitudes. It was not instant. As late as 1977, two-thirds of Americans believed that it was “much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.” By 1994, two-thirds of Americans rejected this notion.

But during the second half of the 1990s and first few years of the 2000s, the equality revolution seemed to stall. Between 1994 and 2004, the percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model actually rose to 40 percent from 34 percent. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of full-time working mothers who said they would prefer to work part time increased to 60 percent from 48 percent. In 1997, a quarter of stay-at-home mothers said full-time work would be ideal. By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full time.

Women’s labor-force participation in the United States also leveled off in the second half of the 1990s, in contrast to its continued increase in most other countries. Gender desegregation of college majors and occupations slowed. And although single mothers continued to increase their hours of paid labor, there was a significant jump in the percentage of married women, especially married women with infants, who left the labor force. By 2004, a smaller percentage of married women with children under 3 were in the labor force than in 1993....

For more than two decades the demands and hours of work have been intensifying. Yet progress in adopting family-friendly work practices and social policies has proceeded at a glacial pace.

Today the main barriers to further progress toward gender equity no longer lie in people’s personal attitudes and relationships. Instead, structural impediments prevent people from acting on their egalitarian values, forcing men and women into personal accommodations and rationalizations that do not reflect their preferences. The gender revolution is not in a stall. It has hit a wall.

In today’s political climate, it’s startling to remember that 80 years ago, in 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. The bill failed in the House, but five years later the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek. By the 1960s, American workers spent less time on the job than their counterparts in Europe and Japan.

Between 1990 and 2000, however, average annual work hours for employed Americans increased. By 2000, the United States had outstripped Japan — the former leader of the work pack — in the hours devoted to paid work. Today, almost 40 percent of men in professional jobs work 50 or more hours a week, as do almost a quarter of men in middle-income occupations. Individuals in lower-income and less-skilled jobs work fewer hours, but they are more likely to experience frequent changes in shifts, mandatory overtime on short notice, and nonstandard hours. And many low-income workers are forced to work two jobs to get by. When we look at dual-earner couples, the workload becomes even more daunting. As of 2000, the average dual-earner couple worked a combined 82 hours a week, while almost 15 percent of married couples had a joint workweek of 100 hours or more.

The reason "gender equality" stalled is because it is an economic impossibility. The reason the average hours worked is so much higher than in the more "sexist" 1960s is because primarily there are more women in the workforce. While immigration too plays a role here, the only significant effect native women have when they enter the labor force in greater numbers is to depress the price of labor. Unlike immigrants, they don't bring in new consumption to help mitigate their wage-depressing effects; the reason real hourly wages peaked in 1973 and have been falling ever since is because that was the year that the number of men younger than 20 and older than 65 leaving the labor force was surpassed by educated, middle-class women entering it.

One-third of working class women have always worked. The change brought by feminism is that now middle class and upper middle class married women work as well. And the more women that work, the more women have to work and the less time women who don't work will have with their husbands who support them, because an INCREASE in the SUPPLY of labor necessitates a DECREASE in the PRICE of labor, demand remaining constant.

And to make matters worse, demand does not remain constant, but actually declines, because a woman who works is statistically much less likely to eventually become a wife and mother, and even when she does, she becomes one several years later and has fewer children. This means that feminism is a structural economic failure as it creates a downward-spiraling vicious circle of three easily identifiable revolutions:

The increase in the supply of labor causes wages to go down. This is indisputable in either logical or empirical terms.

Female hypergamy, female independence, and opportunity cost reduces the marriage rate and the average birth rate, while increased male work hours and work-related romantic opportunities increases the divorce rate. These connections are all logically sound and readily observable.

The reduced birth rate has a negative effect on consumption, and therefore the demand for labor, 20 years before the consequent negative effects on the supply of labor can help balance it out, putting further negative pressure on wage rates. This is also indisputable, both logically and empirically.

While this didn't have to be the case, feminism has also played a role in the debt crisis of the United States, as the Social Security system, Medicare, and Medicaid were set up structurally to be dependent upon the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model and a birthrate higher than the replacement level. Funding for those systems was doomed post-1973, necessitating either their complete restructuring or funding them through debt; obviously the latter path was the one taken, much to the detriment of those who are now on the hook for it.

The complete systematic failure of feminism as well as every society which incorporates the concept of sexual equality is no less predictable than the complete systematic failure of socialism. Ludwig von Mises correctly predicted the failure of socialist societies in his "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth", published only three years after the October Revolution, on the basis of socialism's intrinsic inability to establish a pricing mechanism.

The economic flaws of feminism are no less obvious, no less fundamental and no more avoidable than the economic flaws of socialism. Feminism's structural inability to sustain wage rates and birth rates spells the inevitable doom of every feminist society, as surely as the inability to calculate prices spells the doom of every socialist society. "Gender equality" hasn't stalled because it isn't being sufficiently enforced by the government, it has stalled because it is in the process of collapsing along with the society it has infested.

The impossibility of sexual equalitarian societies has nothing to do with fairness, traditional religious beliefs, human rights, or how intensely one feels that women are equal to men in every way. It is a straightforward and unavoidable consequence of the law of supply and demand, and as such, is far more reliable than the Malthusian equation of the geometric increase of population outstripping the arithmetic increase of the food supply.

An increase in the size of the workforce should result in an increase in total production. With middle and upper class women being unable to preform actual useful work at the same level as their male counter parts we've created make work for them. This results in their labor being a net negative for the economy as a whole. If upper and middle class women did jobs they were suited for: Child care, cooking, and anything that required repetitive small focus production then their contribution would be a net positive, but their earnings would be a lot less.

"Feminism's structural inability to sustain wage rates and birth rates spells the inevitable doom of every feminist society, as surely as the inability to calculate prices spells the doom of every socialist society."

Put more simply, "gender equality" is just another expression for "inability to calculate prices".

"While immigration too plays a role here, the only significant effect native women have when they enter the labor force in greater numbers is to depress the price of labor."

Now that both female and male participation rates have peaked (with the male having declined significantly), would you say immigration is now the dominant factor in keeping wages down? Or is it due to the economy being sucked dry by government and banks? Or other factors?

Now that both female and male participation rates have peaked (with the male having declined significantly), would you say immigration is now the dominant factor in keeping wages down? Or is it due to the economy being sucked dry by government and banks? Or other factors?

Post-2008 credit disinflation is the primary factor. Immigration is the secondary factor. Free trade policies are the tertiary factor.

But how financially viable is the old-school single-income model in today's messed up world?The average young man isn't some super-rich business-genius snowflake. If he takes a wife, she'll have to earn her keep. Any young woman who thinks getting married will be her ticket to a life of idleness and self-amusement at someone else's expense may as well tattoo the phrase "Future Cat Lady" on her own forehead.

But how financially viable is the old-school single-income model in today's messed up world? The average young man isn't some super-rich business-genius snowflake. If he takes a wife, she'll have to earn her keep.

"Here's a phenomenon social scientists just cannot explain. In the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta, personal incomes have been soaring as a booming economy drives down unemployment. And yet as the incomes of male workers rise, more and more women with children seem to be ... staying home with the kids. How to explain this baffling phenemonon?"

You are missing the opposite side of the equation so to speak. If the wife's potential earnings do not trump the costs of her going to work (i.e. gas, daycare, car expenses, etc.) then only a "true believer" would willingly take on employment in lieu of raising her kids. The other variable in the cost analysis for a growing number of families is quite simply, is the extra 5, 10, 20k a year above costs worth my kids going to daycare or public school jungles?? For my family it is clearly not.

> the costs of her going to work (i.e. gas, daycare, car expenses, etc.)

In Sweden, the cost of daycare (roughly $1000 per child per month at a government-run daycare center) is conveniently socialized. Yes, very convenient indeed. And as an added bonus, the children will be exposed to all sorts of great diversity and feminism.

Again the variable, let's say d, is how much is having your children raised properly by those who love them worth to you. If Sweden, like many other countries, are heavily indoctrinating the children, no amount of free subsidies or higher income would dissuade me from my present course. This is happening in ever larger numbers here.

My point was to the original poster that somehow you must be rich for your wife to stay home, when the level of total household income is not even in the equation. There are many people making 500K a year that are struggling with both people working and there are many people making 50K with just dad working that are living quite satisfactorily. Priorities must be made in this crazy world.

If the wife's potential earnings do not trump the costs of her going to work (i.e. gas, daycare, car expenses, etc.) then only a "true believer" would willingly take on employment in lieu of raising her kids

Bingo. Some of the math is hard crowd and the feminists! who devalue time with their children are propaganda cases. People who look at the numbers and don't believe they are fighting a sex war will decide to stay at home when it makes sense. Boomers were bathed in propaganda and believed the BS in large numbers, but it started wearing off with younger generations.

> Again the variable, let's say d, is how much is having your children raised properly by those who love them worth to you. If Sweden, like many other countries, are heavily indoctrinating the children, no amount of free subsidies or higher income would dissuade me from my present course. This is happening in ever larger numbers here.

Certainly; I was not disagreeing with you. The point I was trying to make (quite incidental to your post) was this: When the government socializes daycare costs, having the female work seems like a better deal. The woman can stay at home, paying $0 for daycare and making $0, or she can go to work, again paying $0 for daycare but this time making $3000 (or whatever). The government has twisted the market. (Foisting these costs on the childless is also evil.)

(When I think about it, it is less evil to have the childless paying for daycare, than it is to have a Swedish couple with 2 kids paying for daycare for a family of 10 Somali "refugee" children. But I digress.)

Indeed, Exiled. I know you were making an excellent point about how the cost equation is skewed by meddling feminist governments. I agree with you as to their effects. Despite this meddling however, I still believe that mothers back in the home will continue to rise considering :

1) Work sucks (especially for pencil pushing women in an office filled with clucking hens, and let's be honest that's where women "work"). If women begin to see that they can stay home and relax, read, bond with thier kids, take up other pursuits outside of the home with friends who are in similar positions instead of taking on a soulless job, they will.... in droves. Working for a cause?? For feminism?? Once Sally Special tells all her friends how much fun she is having, the rest will drop like flies.

2) The cost of daycare even in a low cost place like Nashville can easily run 300 a week per kid. For only two kids, that's over $2400 a month. If you were making 3K before taxes, bingo all of it's spent after the tax man before you even fill up your tank or buy your shoulder padded suits. Even a math-challenged woman can see this. In your Sweden example, the costs aren't as pronounced monetarily, but the non-monetary costs we discussed are staggering and you really would have to like your job to begin with, which of course women almost universally do not. (i.e hens etc.)

3) More and more parents are being forced to wake up to demographic realities by virtue of actually having children. The same reason white bachelors move out of their city apartments and buy a house in the burbs when they have a family is the same motivator for taking your kids eventually out of schools entirely. They are untenable. No longer can you rely on even private schools to not screw your kids up. Suburbs are just as bad as the cities for schools. Ergo, if the kids are going to stay home, so does mommy.

This then leaves only the "cause" needing to be fought for as the sole motivator left for women. However, doesn't it strike you that a women willing to sacrifice the well being of her children and go to soulless jobs that she hates only for appearance sake aren't really having any kids anyway??

The derangement of it all... I have a coworker whose stay at home wife sends the kids to preschool. She is convinced that they are better off being socialized and educated. Another just sent his 3month old to day care so his wife can work a menial job (she just likes to work) we are all pulling in six figures so none of this is needed, they just want to let there wives do whatever they want.

"The literature abounds in evidence of the fact that the reluctance of both working-class mothers themselves and of their husbands to accept the principle of work outside the home for married women has been consistently overcome only by the pressing need, existing in the vast majority of working homes, to add to the family income. And this need has resulted either from the consistent and scandalous underpayment of male workers, or the lack of employment right up to the opening of the second World War. 1 Thus Industrialism scored both ways. With the business men and factory owners of the 19th, and 20th centimes, it was always "Tails we win and heads you lose!" in their attitude towards the working masses. For, by underpaying the men, they forced at least the wives of the working classes into the factories and warehouses, and by employing the women were able still further to bargain to advantage with the men, or else to leave them without employment altogether."

"It was to this fact that the authorities, and a fortiori the Feminists, should have turned their attention. From the standpoint of the health of the women themselves, their children and their husbands, and thus ultimately of the nation at large, it was clear that the crying need from 1800 to 1939 was an adequate wage for the married working man. So maniacal, however, was the Feminist longing to "free" women, and above all themselves, from domesticity, that they never once challenged a supine legislature to redress the most tragic grievance of the English labouring classes — a grievance that endured long over a century. And why was this? Chiefly because the Feminist Movement is and always has been an essentially middle class affair, supported by more or less idle spinsters and disgruntled wives, "

F'ism was always a failure, it just took 30 million abortions and millions of created female head cases (created via public schoolz, or mentally ill feminista writers) to live out the dumbest assertion or mass mind control experiment ever attempted; male/female equality is not only an impossibility but cannot stand against the very basics of economics.

This impossibility which Market Ticker refers to a lot happen to do with simple math. Even many elected leaders (see the minimum wage debate) and the most praised socio-psycho-babble (boomers with psych degrees writing in the 1960's to the 1990's) writers never paralleled their ideas with economics to see if they made any sense.

But will it matter? As America's demographics won't be recognizable in another 30 years and single parenthood will always have a presence as the moral fabric of America is gone for good. F'ism one victory did place division between the sexes and threw the female out in the cold on her now fat ass to be dependent upon on a insolvent government.

Dan, I believe VD is addressing this towards the women's issue. Since, they are already consuming, not much more has to actually be produced when they go to work so wages have to go down as the supply of labor skyrockets while the demand for it remains relatively constant. Also it is tenuous at best to think that more women in the workplace are actually producing any real goods or services of any positive value.

I think you may be underestimating the effect of immigration, but I don't have figures available for better analysis. How many immigrants have we imported since 1973? Can we reasonably estimate the increased consumption vs the increase in labor supply? What would be a good "control group" country with similar feminist policies, minus the immigration factor? If nothing else, while feminism might be a crippled camel that was doomed to die, massive immigration might just be the straw that broke its back if nothing else.

I think you may be underestimating the effect of immigration, but I don't have figures available for better analysis.

Unlikely. It's much more probable that you don't realize how many women have entered the labor force since 1950.

1950: 18,3892012: 72,545

So that is 54.16 million more women in the labor force; the delta alone is 35 percent of the 154.79 million total. Do you think it is even remotely plausible that immigrants make up 35 percent of the US labor force?

How does an increase in the supply of labor also increase the demand for goods and services?IM2L844, for goods like gasoline and services like child care, it's pretty obvious. But also, a decrease in prices of other discretionary stuff would mean that more of it is demanded.

I think the effect of women in the workforce on the price of labor has been overestimated a bit. Since 1980, capital has been favored over labor because interest rates were falling. That's especially true in the last decade where interest rates have been close to zero. So, instead of hiring more workers, companies have been replacing them with machines and robots.

That's not irrelevant. An increase in supply with stagnant demand means prices fall. The trouble is... we've devalued the currency much faster than prices have fallen.

We have several anchors dragging this economy down.... not just one massive one. People get hung up on trying to blame all of the symptoms on one thing. I am not accusing you of this VD but some of the commenters here.

Female hypergamy, female independence, and opportunity cost reduces the marriage rate and the average birth rate, while increased male work hours and work-related romantic opportunities increases the divorce rate. These connections are all logically sound and readily observable.

If the bolded part is true, it should be trivial to find such information.

Would consumption would remain flat if the nomimal prices of goods/services decrease?

As Nate noted, it depends on the time preferences. But as a general rule, lower prices increase demand, but there is no guarantee that the lower wages will not go towards profits rather than lower prices.

if demand is stagnant and prices decrease... no... consumption would stay the same but savings would go up

Nate, that is a great point, thank you. Savings would undoubtedly increase, that is true. Interest rates decrease, the structure of production is lengthened, production becomes more capital-intensive and more efficient, and nominal prices fall even more. Nothing bad about that.

I cannot envision consumption staying flat, and here is why. Additional workers means additional consumption in things like transportation goods (cars, fuel). Also a change in consumption patterns where folks consume more services as they have less leisure time. Child care, housecleaning, and lawn services are what I can think of off the top of my head.

I haven't had time to dig into sweden and finland yet... but women have always worked in iceland. literally. Like VD pointed out about 35% of women being in the workforce in the US 100 years ago? Well the percentage of icelander chicks that have always been working has always been way higher that the US. The icelanders themselves suggest that they have always had such short supply of labor that women have simply always been expected to work. So what you have here is feminism taking credit for something that predates it.

Not that Scandinavia is anything healthy these days, with the menfolk treating women exactly like men (I.E, indifferences, them fleeing the countries in droves or seeking foreign brides, and the Second Ottoman Empire eating the countries alive from within, especially Sweden.

"I cannot envision consumption staying flat, and here is why. Additional workers means additional consumption in things like transportation goods (cars, fuel). Also a change in consumption patterns where folks consume more services as they have less leisure time. Child care, housecleaning, and lawn services are what I can think of off the top of my head."

You're making the same mistake many doctors and mechanics make in the process of differential diagnosis. You see a bunch of symptoms and you're trying rule something out because it doesn't cause all of the symptoms you're seeing.

here's the problem... There is more than just 1 issue. its several working away... each effecting the economy in different ways.

For example... you site several reasons that demand should go up. I note that many of those are unrealistic but... lets say demand would go up a bit... the trouble is prices did not come down. Prices went up. Because the currency was devalued deliberately.

Because price did not go down... all of those mitigating factors are suddenly irrelevant.

Sweden went into crisis before the USA or the rest of Europe did. Furthermore, the female labor force participation rate in Sweden and Finland is virtually identical to the rate in the USA. The big difference at the moment is that Sweden and Iceland didn't try to bail out their banks.

2) Cite some sources for...

It is trivially easy to find the relevant information and I suggest you look it up if you doubt its existence. I have absolutely no intention of providing citations and a bibliography every single time I write a blog post. What sort of citations do you expect to provide you with the logic? Or are you asking to be spoon-fed that too?

I have no intention of responding to ignorant protestations that are based on literally nothing except feelings. If you don't have any factual information or logical arguments with which counter my assertions beyond the vague impressions in your little heads, then you really need to learn to either shut up or ask politely to have it all explained to you.

I cannot envision consumption staying flat, and here is why. Additional workers means additional consumption in things like transportation goods (cars, fuel). Also a change in consumption patterns where folks consume more services as they have less leisure time. Child care, housecleaning, and lawn services are what I can think of off the top of my head.

That's your problem. Even Keynesians, retarded though they are economically, grasp the basic concept of a demand gap. And do you really think people net consume more with less leisure? No doubt that is why the working poor consume the most resources in our society, rather than the leisurely rich.

You're so focused on the tree that disturbs you that you're not thinking clearly. What part of an increase equal to over one-third of the total supply having a significant effect on price can possibly be hard to understand?

We have several anchors dragging this economy down.... not just one massive one. People get hung up on trying to blame all of the symptoms on one thing. I am not accusing you of this VD but some of the commenters here.

I don't disagree in the slightest. But it is annoying to be pointing out the smashed front-end of the car and asserting that it hit a tree, only to have some yahoo start arguing that because the car is also on fire, it must not have crashed into anything.

"I don't disagree in the slightest. But it is annoying to be pointing out the smashed front-end of the car and asserting that it hit a tree, only to have some yahoo start arguing that because the car is also on fire, it must not have crashed into anything."

I honestly didn't realize how insanely important Makers Mark is to people before this whole broohaha came up. I mean the country is going to hell in a hand basket.. but HOLY SHIT!!! Makers Mark is dropping their alcohol content by 3%!!!!

Its like half the country caught the vapors.

Which.. indicates that the national priorities are far more in order than I had previously feared.

And do you really think people net consume more with less leisure?Yes, I do. Based on my own experience, admittedly. When my wife and I both worked, we consumed more of all the goods/services that I previously listed. When money was plentiful and time was scarce, the way we valued them relative to each other was very different from now. Presently, it’s the other way around, and all the discretionary purchases are gone.

What part of an increase equal to over one-third of the total supply having a significant effect on price can possibly be hard to understand?It’s not hard to understand, if you’re referring to nominal price.

Yes, I do. Based on my own experience, admittedly. When my wife and I both worked, we consumed more of all the goods/services that I previously listed.

Go to an upscale mall. Notice the women carrying all the bags. Do they look gainfully employed to you? If we're basing this on personal experience, I'll note that my mother alone could account for a higher percentage of GDP on a single bored afternoon than 100 working mothers could consume in day care services and transportation costs in a year.

You know it's out of control when they have personal shoppers to buy things for them when they're too busy buying things at other stores.

"Yes, I do. Based on my own experience, admittedly. When my wife and I both worked, we consumed more of all the goods/services that I previously listed. When money was plentiful and time was scarce, the way we valued them relative to each other was very different from now."

the difference is what is considered discretionary. if the wife works... suddenly you need not 2 cars... but 3. because if one of the cars is down... both still have to get to work. Where as if the wife doesn't work... you could argue that even a second car is discretionary spending.. and a third absolutely is.

Eating out 10 times a week isn't discretionary because you can't cook. But when wife is at home... eating out becomes discretionary.

In short you're looking at the money that you spent... and you're ignoring the other ways that money is now spend... or saved.

The only way a massive increase in labor would increase "demand" would be if the massive increase in labor increased productivity and created new products or services at a greater rate than the rate by which they increased the labor pool. Did the 35% increase of the labor pool by women result in an increase in productivity of 40% or greater, or result in 40% more new products and services created? I don't think so.

i do believe that women going to work has increased demand for various services and goods. I support this by noting how incredibly expensive it is for a spouse to work. I know when I worked it out on the spreadsheet I was going to have to earn about 60k a year just to break even if I were to go back to work. now that was higher than average because of the taxation rate. but account for that difference and it comes in about 40k... which is what is more often sited in studies. You also have the whole "I deserve" rationalization. people go to work... they see the fancy new car in the parking lot and think "I work hard. I deserve that car." so they talk themselves into spending money they don't have.

So you've increased demand right? So that should offset the increase in labor? Right?

No.

for a few reasons. 1) Demand does not mean "the urge to buy something... anything!" demand is specific and relative to specific products. So demand for certain things is increased... in other areas its decreased. Microwave meals up. Fresh food from the grocery down. Dig? 2) The additional labor didn't correlate with a massive increase in production. Most chicks are in human resources or some other almost entirely useless if not totally counterproductive line of work. Power point presentations don't actually effect supply.. no matter how many you make or how pretty they are. And yes i know production went up in the US over the last 40 years.. but that was about technology and industrial advancement.. not about labor. If anything... women joining the labor force INCREASED labor price by creating all the bullshit lawsuits and HR meetings and rules and regulations.

So to sum up... Women created a massive supply bump in labor... but at the same time created a huge disruption in the workforce that reduced efficiency. What you see... in the end is higher labor costs to companies... but lower wages for workers. The worst possible outcome.

More than 100 working mothers could consume in day care services and transportation costs in a year.

Halig scit, sometimes I forget the difference, although I fully recognize it as an economic principle. If you don't know at least one wealthy person moderately well, I really don't know if the gulf can sink in.

It is preposterous to claim, statistically, that a household that splits former statistical single-income into a double-income of the same value is an economic boon. The Two-Income Trap did a reasonable gloss of the situation, with strong source data, sort of from the other side of economics.

Any way you slice it, the economics don't work, except as a matter of fantasy.

It was a Hendrick-engine day; it starts to look like they lined up by body-weight (1-Patrick, 2-Gordon,4-Newman,5-Stewart). Don't worry she'll crash out early in the Duel and in the 500...and I'm almost certain it will be the 17 Roush Ford driven by her boyfriend, just like how the Sauter Brothers would always find each other and wreck.

Would consumption would remain flat if the nomimal prices of goods/services decrease?

It should be clear that women entering the work force would have a disparate impact.

For example, they would compete more with other women and for positions women can operate in, like domestic, menial and clerical work. It thus seems likely that they were competing more with each other and that white women were displacing black males and females.

They simply do not contribute in more demanding areas.

On the other hand, high IQ immigrants from India and China were/are displacing white males from the lower end of the spectrum in the more intellectually demanding professions.

One thing that was not mentioned here is the lost value of the work women perform in the homes.

Not only is that value lost, but the losses are doubled because babysitters, transportation to work, etc. etc. are expenses which exponentially increase with the women leaving the home.

If your woman is working just to try and bring more money into the home... sit down and do some basic math. Calculate the value of lost services and increased costs of her working in dollars and cents. Factor in the decreased quality of life. I bet it will be quite shocking.

There is a reason you work harder and longer and yet are busted and broke, in debt up to your eyeballs, running on a financial treadmill, and very little to truly show for the pittance of money that you do bring in other than more debt and more bad credit.

Interesting how the author blatantly attempts to shame the group to demonstrate how the inequality she sees is such a terrible thing, a terrible thing that had changed some for the better but is now turning for the worse. Starting at the end of the second page and continuing through most of the third, she rattles off comparative statistic after comparative static, detailing how the US ranks compared to other nations when it comes to family work programs and female labor participation. All of the statistics she uses show the US lagging behind the developed countries of Europe and elsewhere, with our trajectory heading south. I wonder if she would also bemoan our low ranking of albino mutilations compared to other nations. Nowhere in the article does she discuss the overall economic impact of these policies on the nations that pursue them, or demonstrate how what she advocates specifically builds wealth and prosperity.

One point I think is mostly being missed -- it isn't just supply & demand, it's proportions of things. As (I think) Say has it, supply creates its own demand, in that people go to work to produce because they want to consume more, as noted by several people. More people working should result in more production and more consumption (minus, of course, vampyric and make-work crap).

The thing being missed is capital. Production occurs through the combination of the factors of production. Increasing the supply of labor relative to capital makes capital the limiting factor -- increasing its value relative to labor.

So, the owners of capital get the upper hand against labor in the bid for income.

Nowhere in the article does she discuss the overall economic impact of these policies on the nations that pursue them, or demonstrate how what she advocates specifically builds wealth and prosperity.

Of course she doesn't. She literally cannot see beyond that fact that women's numbers on whatever metric she is attaching importance to don't match up. The reasons why they don't match up and the affect of forcing them to match do not matter. Her sensibilities and her feelings are hurt. That's what this revolves around.

Looked at another way, by reducing the availability of capital per worker, each worker is less individually productive, and if we approximate that each worker is paid his DMVP (basically, 'what he's worth') he will be paid less because he is individually less productive in a real sense.

Other workers are bidding away access to capital by accepting lower wages.

Note that wages stagnated (not dropped) in '73, about the time Nixon 'opened up' China. Additional capital accumulated where returns would be greater; the quantity of capital in America stagnated.

Wages stagnated because productivity stagnated, and also because the value of labor to the process of production fell (and 'for many other reasons,' as has been pointed out; it really is a complex situation). But if it were merely an abstract question of 'supply and demand,' wages would have fallen dramatically, and we'd all be paid about the same as a Chinese migrant worker.

A useful observation, but unfortunately not very applicable to women entering the workforce. The truth is, women aren't very good at production outside of a few specific roles. There's not much they can do to be productive outside the home that they weren't already doing (the "One-third of working class women have always worked" part Vox mentioned) when feminism exploded.

So instead of adding more productivity, women have added more bureaucracy. This has actually, as Red pointed out in the 2nd comment on the thread, resulted in negative productivity gains, as productive work is held hostage to the needs of the bureaucracy.

This is where Catholics and Christians decided to sit there and let the culture commit suicide.

First was a missed opportunity - State is going to bus your kids 2 hours away? We have a local (integrated as necessary but no nonsense) local school. Instead we had white flight.

Another thing was contraception - including and especially in marriage. Lives are now planned around having the - maybe - two kids - later, after the careers are stable - and then no more.

Later, I forgot who said "If I have your child for the first seven years". Today this means government day care and public schools. Government schools are limited in damage if there are a bunch of seriously piqued mothers ready to lynch the administration and teachers and have the time to do so (Phyllis Schafley wrote an entire book as this was transitioning). Now they have the 30 minute quota of "quality time".

If those with proper values would create a system - the Catholic church did so - it was an intentional project to set up a parallel educational system - society could be redeemed. But like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, helping the infirm, everyone says go see Obama - at least until we can elect a republican and then whine if he wants to cut benefits.

An increase in supply with stagnant demand means prices fall. The trouble is... we've devalued the currency much faster than prices have fallen.

Agreed, but I do think there's a connection between devaluation and the addition of women to the workforce (beyond the Ponzi-scheme trap Vox already mentioned). A good chunk of overall female wages come from the government or from bureaucracies required by government action (e.g HR departments). It may not be a huge percentage of the economy, but it is something that operates at the margins, and the margins are very powerful. Over 50 years, the difference between spending slightly more than you earn and slightly less than you earn amounts to a very big deal.

Bottom line, there indeed are many things going on, but the fundamental impact is that was a society we have not been producing as much as we have been consuming for several years. Whether it's been due to women entering the workforce or for some other reason, we have diverted so much of our energy into paper-shuffling and pretend work, we don't have enough left to make what we consume.

Like you said, Power point presentations don't actually effect supply.. no matter how many you make or how pretty they are.

Much in the way that Detroit and Chicago are Too Black to Fail, feminism is likewise far too important to the ruling squids and their faithful nomenklatura for its failure to become apparent to the proles. Of all the insane equalitarian ideologies which make up the branches of the Cathedral's great tree of death, feminism is easily the most thoroughly discredited - as became readily apparent when High Priestess Steinem pronounced the "one free grope" rule in the wake of Beelzebubba's antics. In a sane society, such an ideology would have been laughed out of town and cast upon the trash heap of history. That's not what happened though. Indeed, we now witness the total triumph of the insane doctrine as the military will now admit females to front line combat units.

Eating out 10 times a week isn't discretionary because you can't cook. But when wife is at home... eating out becomes discretionary.

And this plays into my theme of women being less productive outside the home. Many women are perfectly - even magnificiently - capable of cooking for their family, but cannot run a restaurant kitchen. How many female executive chefs are there? When families need to eat out 10 times a week, men have to run those eateries, and the men running those eateries are not available to run a production line of some sort.

Of course, simple basic econ 101 (well, maybe 102) comes in as well, namely the theory of diminishing returns. Adding more resources may increase total productivity, but will decrease average productivity, as the new resources will almost always be less efficient than the ones already employed.

Ah, and I see Scott already tapped into this when he said "Looked at another way, by reducing the availability of capital per worker, each worker is less individually productive".

What puzzles me is that there are plenty of opportunities for alternative structures for both making sufficient money and getting sufficient education from your web-attached computer and a phone. Sure, you will not achieve the peak of earning of an Ivy JD employed as a partner at one of the ten firms that matter in NYC, but you also have a reasonable life with more freedom and flexiblity. Similarly, sure, you can't get a degree from Harvard or Stanford without being there, but you can follow most of the courses online now -- so you get the learning without the expense but also without the paper. (For paper, there's always something like Western Governor University the Mormon stay-at-home school.)

So, while at the same time there's the ability to achieve a more than sufficient standard of living by adapting work and education to fit an ordered life -- the elusive "work-life-balance" that women always bitch about -- they continue to want to slam their heads against the same old work structure to push it to match the whim of the moment and to thus break the economy.

It's the oddest kind of female envy: given the opportunity middle class educatable women have to build a reasonable life, they still have to burn down the whole thing because someone, somewhere might be making more money.

Of course she doesn't. She literally cannot see beyond that fact that women's numbers on whatever metric she is attaching importance to don't match up. The reasons why they don't match up and the affect of forcing them to match do not matter. Her sensibilities and her feelings are hurt. That's what this revolves around.

Certainly; yet that this piece was published in the NYT, still a publication of no small influence, is testament to how these perceived slights permeate our culture, and how effective the ‘us vs. them’ argument is wielded by those framing the current discourse. The author spends no time defending feminism itself; she assumes its validity, using it even against those women who chose to avail themselves of its advantages in their pursuit of happiness. Not that this is surprising, but rather she provides an unintended view into the cold, dry cellar of her thought, where never-filled bottles of freedom collect naught but cobwebs and dust.

I personally wonder how many women enter the workplace because they have been indoctrinated that it is "the right thing to do." I know for mine it took years for her to get it into her head that "the right thing to do is exactly what you're doing right now."

She has for the most part always been a homemaker, but used to somewhat bother her that she didn't have a "real job". I'd always somewhat gently, but very directly, say something of the lines of "You already have a real job. What you're doing here taking care of our family is way more useful to me than a few extra dollars a month." The issue would go away for a good long while, but every so often in our early years of marriage it would come back as a nagging issue.

She came to realize several years ago that her impetus for wanting a "real job" was because that was what her friends were doing and what she had been taught she was supposed to do her whole life. After finally reaching that conclusion, she has over the years become more interested in becoming a counterbalance to the above thought process.

I'll tell you a story: years ago, when I was a promising young high school student writing out my application for Prestigious University, I was sitting at the kitchen table with both my parents, filling in the blanks. One of them said, "FATHER'S OCCUPATION". Now my father's occupation could be described in many ways, because he was a skilled tradesman but the wording wasn't obvious, so I asked him what he wanted me to put down, and he told me. Next came "MOTHER'S OCCUPATION". My mother was a stay-at-home mom. I asked her what she thought I should write down, and she looked at me directly and said, "Home-maker" with the same sort of confidence you would have if you said "fighter pilot" or "neurosurgeon".

And she was right: she had painstakingly raised many children, teaching all of them to read and write and do math and paint and play music and behave, well before any of us even got to kindergarten, and all of them had grown up to be sane, well-adjusted, productive successful people. She was a master of her craft... and it _is_ a craft.

Whining and hand-wringing. What does this accomplish? We can dissect the corpse, once we are certain we have one to dissect. Tell ya what. Lets concentrate on a solution. Acquire and implement that, then search for dead bodies. In warfare and war, searching for the dead is not of paramount interest and importance. Winning the war is...

Interesting thing about feminism. I will have to ask Mrs. Barnewall this question. Are you a feminist? That is, do you believe in equal rights for all women? I guess that she would answer that she does not believe necessarily in the classic rights argument. However, she does believe in equal opportunity for women.

Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in Finance and Business, and Who’s Who in the World

I find it even more interesting, that if I was asked if I could point to one person that understands this nation's (and the free world at large) economic problems, with the clarity of banking and finance like no other, [1] then aside from pointing to the person Mrs. Barnewall is writing a biography about, I would point people to Mrs. Barnewall.

It sounds to me like the unlawful greed on Wall Street got beyond the control of the Rothschild cabal. JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs – they don’t seem to understand what happens to an entire empire of corruption when the goose that lays the golden eggs gets killed by greed...

...No… you are not to believe that the BIS and Rothschilds are no longer party to “the plan.” I think I would more accurately say that both are trying very hard to regain control of a snowball running downhill and quickly getting bigger and bigger and more and more out of their control… and they aren’t exactly sure how to stop it. There is no distinction between the Rothschild Illuminati and the Cabal/P2 infiltration of Masonic Lodges… and the Vatican, for that matter. [2]

Produce to me, and all others here someone equivalent to Forbes’ “Dean of American Private Banking,” that can present evidence to the contrary. No one can with credulity. No one else can to date, with the cojones presented by Mrs. Barnewall.

Why is it, that aside from men like William Egan Colby, William Joseph Casey, Leo Emil Wanta, and Ronald Wilson Reagan, that with them one single solitary women may well go down in most favorable history with them? Perhaps because it will be the consensus some day, in our future, and in recorded history, that she not only fully understood the problem facing the nation, but equally understood and promulgated the solution.

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall should go down in history as America's 21st Century Betsy Ross. That is even not apt. There is too many disputes over Ross. Amazing how such get credit for something they probably never did, and still their legacy gets cemented in American minds. Forget Abigail Adams. I say, eclipsing even Thatcher, Barnewall is the true Iron Lady...

----------------[1] Paul Volcker hired Mrs. Barnewall to consult with the Federal Reserve Board in Reagan's first term. She educated the board on the importance of "private banking." To which it appears the board listened and heeded the advice. Post that, with Greenspan to the present, apparently not so. Barnewall also had private consultations with Dr. Ron Paul.

I used to be a financial advisor and I dealt with a lot of mid to older clients. YOu could always tell the classy ones and the solid salt of the Earth types because their reactions would be just like the one you described. There is nothing more important for a woman than to care and rear properly the next generation.

So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold - and then for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.

Sigh. Flashing neon signs noting both that we are on the wide road, and that Hell is only a few more mileposts ahead. And we step on the accelerator.

I suspect that there is likely to be significant overlap between men who advocate for women to concentrate on family life and men who rail about the costs of divorce and how the deck is stacked in favor of women but to my mind the two factors must be intimately linked.

If the woman is tying her future to the stability of the family and has no skills which are marketable in the labor marketplace, then come family dissolution the husband is going to have to take the hit.

The complication which arises is that women tend to be in the majority on the issue of deciding to pull the plug but this doesn't tell us how fault for marital breakdown can be attributed, it only tells us which spouse was first to reach their limit.

Only that I am stunned, STUNNED that we didn't have rampant divorce theft back in the day when women didn't typically hold jobs and their well-being hinged on keeping things together. You would think women would be ditching their husbands right and left!

I wonder what laws might have changed to facilitate women bailing on their marriages for any reason or no reason, since then.

because an INCREASE in the SUPPLY of labor necessitates a DECREASE in the PRICE of labor, demand remaining constant.

Playing devil's advocate, the other side would say that demand has not remained constant. They would say that free trade and increased access to a growing world economy has led to an increase in demand. They would cite figures showing how big firms like GM and GE do almost half their business outside the US, where before it was almost exclusive to the domestic market.

Some genies are easier to put back in the bottle than others. Economic self-interest, the cost of day-care consuming a large share of women's earnings, the effects of labor supply on the demand for labor and so on are easier to grapple with than the battles in the social realm dealing with sexuality, marriage fulfillment, infidelity, less tolerance for bad behaviors in marriage, and so on.

But let's look at your point - divorce theft. Theft implies the taking of something which does not belong to you. A marriage constitutes a binding together of a man and a woman and if this arrangement entails that the man devotes his energies to the labor market and enhance his skills so that they become more valuable in the labor market and the woman devotes her energies to the family's well being and enhance her skills so that they become more valuable to family life, then if divorce strikes, a lot of people, men and women, are going to notice that there is an unjust burden placed on the women who must now compete in the labor marketplace when she's dealing with a 20+ year deficit in skill development.

It's one thing to lay out an economic case for traditional gender roles in marriage and that case can be made quite persuasively but it's a much more difficult task to turn back the sexual revolution and its influence on marriage dynamics and the legitimacy of divorce. Interpersonal dynamics between husbands and wives aren't so radically changed - what's changed are the options one can take to deal with the consequences of those interpersonal dynamics. When divorce was a heavy social stigma many marriages stayed together and life was awful for husband and wife. So tell me, how do you propose to make the case to return to that social mindset?

Tango, we can start by eliminating the divorce theft. I know a guy in Michigan who was the breadwinner and his wife cheated on him. He now writes a check for 3K/month to her to live with her latest boyfriend in FL. What just law allows for that? WGM

@scoobius doobius - kudos from a fellow son of a skilled tradesman. In my case my father was a blue-collar mechanical genius, but I'm more toward electronics and software.

Back when women were home-makers we had alimony, which only financially raped the worst of men - the unfaithful, abandoners, or abusers. Now we financially rape all men. Also back then we valued virginity and fecundity.

There are no isotopes, much less elements made out of positronium. But this universe was never intended to have electrons and anti-electrons, but electrons and protons (and neutrons) where each had their place. Things tend to cancel out and blow up otherwise.

A couple making 200k shouldn't be living in a house that costs 400k. They should be living in a hose that costs less than 100k. A couple making 200k shouldn't be driving a car that costs 50k. They should be driving a second-hand car that costs less than 15k. End of economics class.

I know a guy in Michigan who was the breadwinner and his wife cheated on him. He now writes a check for 3K/month to her to live with her latest boyfriend in FL. What just law allows for that?

There are multiple issues wrapped up in this scenario.

1.) The alimony issue. This couple had role specialization. Just as with business partnerships established by people with diverse talents, the issue here is how to split the income and assets of this marriage fairly, especially in cases where the wife specializing on family life allows the husband to specialize in the labor market and increase his value in the labor market. Consider the following:

What is of greater interest is the manner in which the results of the Basic specification differ by race. Recently married white men earn about 6% more than otherwise similar individuals and experience a rate of wage growth about 1.1% greater than their unmarried counterparts. Thus, there is significant evidence of faster wage growth following marriage which could be attributed to increased specialization following marriage because married men have more time to devote to market activities. By contrast, recently married African American men earn over 10% more than otherwise similar individuals but experience no wage growth differential. As argued above, there is evidence from time use studies that African American households engage in less intrahousehold specialization than white households. Our finding that married African American men do not experience the faster post-marriage wage growth that married white men do is indirect evidence that higher post-marriage wage growth could be attributed to intrahousehold specialization.

2.) Cause of the divorce. This is s separate issue from how to split up the assets of a marital partnership. The asset building occurred before the marriage broke up so the cause of divorce doesn't affect the financial calculation other than if we want to assign penalties to divorce and bad behavior within the marriage.

3.) Behavior after the divorce. This dude is paying his ex-wife $3,000 per month and she's shacking up with her boy-toy. That burns, I get it. But the justness of the divorce proceedings and the settlement have nothing to do with post-divorce behavior. The settlement was just or unjust when it was reached and whether the ex-wife lives like a nun or a slut after the divorce doesn't change the merit of the divorce settlement.

You're all looking at this the wrong way.Here, in New York, I know a young (<35) man who works as a substitute pharmacist.In a 2 day per week schedule, he earns about $5000/2 week pay period after taxes.What does he do? He works on "emergency/flex time/medical" days, the days that are taken off by women during the month for rest and/or recuperation. For his "sacrifice", he is paid about $1800 a day. I have never seen him sober, exhausted or without an attractive woman on his arm.

To be clear, this man earns $7000/month after rent/utilities/food to work in between the lines. Between 2010 and 2013, he's saved over $150K in the bank while being able to afford plenty of trips to Brazil, Thailand, Luxemburg, UAE, basically any place that a man with ample amounts of cash and a pleasant demeanour can have fun.In comparison, the women for whom he works as a substitute earn 50% more money while working twice as many hours.

The cool kids figured this out decades ago (don't get married, work in fits and spurts, sock away $50-200/month, retire at 60, move to Costa Rica/Panama/Philippines/anywhere on the planet that will give you access to First World amenities at Third World costs.) Rooshv can afford to be a "sex tourist" because his book money pays his expenses (and he isn't selling $100K a year in books, either.) You can't throw a rock in a former military haven without hitting a retired GI, who will tell you to your face that it's cheaper and easier to live within eyesight of the Canal or Subic than to fight your way through the throngs of "liberated" women for jobs. My *father* retired as an E-7. Worked as a military contractor, used his tax-free salary to build a manse in Panama. He's renting the "guest house" to his former commander (newly divorced man, pays half of his pension in alimony and child support, retired as an O-5 but couldn't get his business off the ground because of "gender diversity" initiatives.) Now, the two of them earn $1000 American a month doing vehicle/HVAC repairs in a foreign country. My Da uses his military pension to impress the Panamanian girls, his lodger uses his military pension to hang out in Chiang Mai and Ulan Bator. GYOW is the way to live, because we can't compete with the women/government matrix (and just for the race baiters: both my father and his boarder are black.)

And the more women that work, the more women have to work and the less time women who don't work will have with their husbands who support them, because an INCREASE in the SUPPLY of labor necessitates a DECREASE in the PRICE of labor, demand remaining constant.

What ultimately matters is production in an economy - whether the movement of women from unpaid labor in the home to paid labor in the workplace actually increases the goods and services available to the nation as a whole.

Now, you might make an interesting case that it didn't - that the work done by women in the home had a value which wasn't reflected in GDP figures or wages paid.

The answer there, of course, is to value such domestic labor - women's work - and pay accordingly. If a wife is keeping house, she should be paid accordingly by her husband, and if a mother is raising new citizens, they should be paid accordingly by the State.

But of course, RSHD that you are, I doubt you'd be able to follow that logic.

Yep. Which combined with the males wages, after inflation and expenses, work out to be pretty much the same wages the single earner male was making before. Thus, disposable income demand stays relatively constant. Funny how that works, isn't it.

> The answer there, of course, is to value such domestic labor - women's work - and pay accordingly.

Which is exactly how it worked. The single income was divided between two people. Now, it takes both working to get the same disposable income.

> I doubt you'd be able to follow that logic.

Maybe if you ever expressed some we could find out. But since that will never happen...

A couple making 200k shouldn't be living in a house that costs 400k. They should be living in a hose that costs less than 100k. A couple making 200k shouldn't be driving a car that costs 50k. They should be driving a second-hand car that costs less than 15k. End of economics class.

You have an excellent point...it is astonishing how many people do not grasp this simple point.

They work 70 hrs/week to afford this stuff...then complain they are too tired, and too time-impoverished, to afford any of it.

And of course they have too much debt to service to cut back on work...

"The answer there, of course, is to value such domestic labor - women's work - and pay accordingly. If a wife is keeping house, she should be paid accordingly by her husband, and if a mother is raising new citizens, they should be paid accordingly by the State."

Apparently the 73% difference in standard of living between a married and a divorced woman as found by Lenore Weitzman isn't payment enough for you? That feminists at the same time call marriage a slavery contract for women and the only unpaid labor is their chutzpah and lying through the teeth.

Though your proposal merits consideration in the case of divorce; instead of giving away children to mother along with the house, the husband keeps the house while paying the mother of the children a suitable amount as a nanny. If he be so inclined, she could also sleep over at night.

What ultimately matters is production in an economy - whether the movement of women from unpaid labor in the home to paid labor in the workplace actually increases the goods and services available to the nation as a whole.

Now, you might make an interesting case that it didn't - that the work done by women in the home had a value which wasn't reflected in GDP figures or wages paid.

The answer there, of course, is to value such domestic labor - women's work - and pay accordingly. If a wife is keeping house, she should be paid accordingly by her husband, and if a mother is raising new citizens, they should be paid accordingly by the State.

But of course, RSHD that you are, I doubt you'd be able to follow that logic.

Ahhh, I see that Phoenician has been sucking too much cock, probably his own.

He can't understand the law of diminishing returns, and cannot understand that women do not improve productivity. Rather, they add bureaucratic overhead, and thus, they compete with all the other overheads.

Finally, of course, husbands pay for that domestic labor by bringing home a paycheck to provision their wives and offspring, which is the common goal that they are striving for.

I don't want to get caught up in an argument outside my area, but I have to say I found this -

The answer there, of course, is to value such domestic labor - women's work - and pay accordingly. If a wife is keeping house, she should be paid accordingly by her husband, and if a mother is raising new citizens, they should be paid accordingly by the State.

- to be an exercise in futility. Why the heck would a husband need to pay a wife or vice versa for 'services rendered'? They're married. They live in the same house. They share the same funds.

And being paid by the state to 'home-make' seems partially redundant, since much of the idea seems to be simply to save money, reduce expenditure and even consumption. I'm sure they wouldn't object to 'free' money, however.

What ultimately matters is production in an economyYes if only the Soviet Union had produced even more Lada's they would have sold more and been saved from economic ruin.

Also with immigrants, their contribution to additional supply will be more than their the additional demand since a significant portion of their wages will be sent back home to support the family remaining there

Hmm... I get that women in the work force means that the competition is fiercer because there are more people in it. However, women still go into girly work like teaching and men still go into sausagefests like engineering. There is also a prolonged and often unwanted period of singleness which accompanies the modern era. I asked this somewhere else, what precisely should a woman be doing during this time? Playing the helpless fairy tale princess who does nothing with herself until the prince comes along and saves her? A modern princess like Kate Middleton married later in life to a modern prince. He would have had none of that kind of old-fashioned princess and such a princess would have been ill prepared for the demands of modern royal life which requires giving speeches, keeping on top of their country's issues, appearing at charity events, sponsoring charity events, meeting heads of state, and being the country's public face. Waity Katie was certainly wise to have been working in the family party planning business.

However, for us normal people, I agree with everyone that keeping up with the Joneses and falling prey to every advertising scheme is making people overspend. Does anyone really NEEEEEED a minivan? No. When I was a kid we rode in the back seat of the 'rent's car. And we liked it. And sometimes we played slug bug, but mostly we learned how to get along.

Yes. It is often the most economical vehicle for a family of 7 or 8, rather than using two vehicles with smaller capacities or a more expensive full-size SUV; even the modern "wagon" style vehicles don't have the capacity of yore.